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  “You, nervous?” Bryce echoed incredulously. Growing up, Duncan had always been the one who leaped first then looked, practically giving their late mother a heart attack more than once. “I thought you were the brother with nerves of steel.”

  “His nerves might be made of steel, but he’s got a heart made out of pure mush,” Moira Cavanaugh, their sister, chimed in as she joined their small circle. “Hi, I’m Moira. I have the sad fortune of being their sister,” she told Scottie, indicating both men at the table.

  Duncan was about to defend his good name when suddenly the first few bars of a song that almost everyone was familiar with rang out. It was a marching song written by John Philip Sousa. Both Bryce and Moira looked right at Duncan who, for the first time in his life, turned rather pale.

  “It’s Lucy,” he cried before he even took out his cell. “I had Valri program that ringtone for Noelle’s grandmother so I’d know it was her calling.”

  “Maybe she’s just checking in to see when you’re coming home,” Moira suggested, even though it appeared to Scottie that she was beginning to get excited, as well.

  “What are the odds?” Duncan asked. Yanking the phone out of his pocket, he almost dropped it right in front of Scottie before he managed to get a better grip on it and then swipe it open. “Hello? Is it time?” he asked, his voice almost breathless. “Oh. Okay.” His shoulders sagged with relief as he told the caller, “I’ll pick it up on my way home. Be there in twenty minutes.”

  Terminating the call, Duncan saw that all eyes around the small table and beyond were on him.

  “Noelle wants me to pick up some mint-chip ice cream on my way home.”

  Like the others, Bryce had thought it was “time.” The false alarm had him laughing. “Better get going then, bro. And give my love to Noelle.”

  “Isn’t that how this whole thing got started?” Moira quipped innocently.

  Duncan waved a silencing hand at her. He left his half-consumed bottle of ale on the table, nodding at Scottie as he said, “Nice to see you finally out after hours.” And with that, he made his way to the front entrance.

  “I sure hope she gives birth soon,” Moira commented to Bryce and his new partner as she started walking away, as well. “Right now, Duncan’s moving around like a man in a trance.”

  “As opposed to the way he’ll be moving around after the baby’s here and he hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week.”

  Scottie turned in her chair to see that the comment had come from Sean Cavanaugh, the head of the Crime Scene Investigation’s day shift and part of the older generation of Cavanaughs working in the precinct.

  Obviously having overheard their conversation, Sean smiled warmly at the young woman at the table with his nephew.

  “Poor guy doesn’t know that these are what he’ll look back on as ‘the good old days’ for the first couple of years as he struggles to get his ‘daddy legs,’” Sean said with a fond laugh.

  “‘Daddy legs’?” Scottie repeated, looking toward the older man for an explanation.

  “They’re just like sea legs except they’re a lot trickier to maneuver with,” Sean recalled, laughing softly as he remembered several instances. “After having seven kids, I ought to know.”

  “I thought it was the mother who stayed up all night with the kids,” Bryce commented.

  His uncle laughed, patting him on his cheek. “So young, so much to learn,” he commented with amusement. And then he looked at Scottie again, as if taking a close look at her this time. “You’re Bryce’s new partner, aren’t you?”

  She and Sean Cavanaugh had never crossed paths. That he even knew who she was really surprised her. “Yes, but how did you—?”

  The corners of Sean’s mouth curved, his expression almost bordering on the mysterious.

  “There are no secrets in the police department, Detective Scott. And even less in the Cavanaugh world.” His green eyes took measure of her quickly and he clearly liked what he saw. “First time here at Malone’s?” he asked.

  Was there a sign taped on her back that said tourist or something along those lines? Or was it that she just looked so out of place? She had to ask the man, “Now, how would you know that?”

  “I head the CSI unit, Scottie. It’s my job to know everything,” he told her mildly. Turning toward the bartender, he signaled for the man’s attention. When he got it, Sean indicated the two people sitting at the table behind him. “The next round’s on me,” he told the bartender.

  Scottie protested immediately. “No, I just stopped in for the one.”

  “You don’t have to drink it,” Sean told her good-naturedly. “Just hold on to the bottle. ‘Getting a drink at Malone’s’ is, for the most part, just an excuse to linger on the premises and mingle with your brothers and sisters in blue.” His smile, a genial, comforting expression, widened as he added, “In my family’s case, that’s truer than you’d expect. Be seeing you around,” he said to both Bryce and Scottie just before he walked away and left the establishment.

  “Two of the same, right?” the bartender asked, depositing two more bottles at the table that she was sharing with her partner.

  “I really never drink this much,” Scottie told the man sitting opposite her.

  “Like Uncle Sean said,” Bryce reminded her, “you don’t have to drink. It’s just an excuse to linger.”

  She wanted him to get something straight right off the bat. “If I wanted to linger, I wouldn’t need an excuse,” Scottie told him.

  His mouth quirked just a little. “The key word here being wanted,” Bryce guessed. It was obvious that she wanted to leave. He sat back. He would have wanted her to stay a bit longer, but he wasn’t about to tie her to her chair. “Well, you lived up to your bargain, so you’re free to go.” But before she left, in the spirit of honesty, he couldn’t help telling her, “I was just hoping that once you came, you’d want to stay a bit.”

  Scottie had been feeling restless and antsy ever since she’d come out of the homeless shelter empty-handed. “I don’t like wasting time.”

  Bryce gestured around to not just include their table but the surrounding people, as well. “This isn’t wasting time.”

  She pinned him with a look. Everyone was sitting around, exchanging bits and pieces of what had once been conversation. They lived in a world of abbreviations and sound bites.

  “All right, then tell me. What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s recharging your batteries, maybe talking things out with other law-enforcement agents who might have a clearer perspective than you do. It’s clearing your head so that you can go home without keeping everything bottled up inside and scaring the person who means the most to you. At its simplest level,” Bryce added, “it’s networking.”

  She focused on the first couple of points he’d mentioned. “So that’s what’s going on here?” she asked, doing her best to keep the sarcasm she keenly felt from infiltrating her voice. “Crime solving?”

  “At times,” Bryce responded without blinking an eye. “And, like I said, at other times, it’s just kicking back, unwinding and recharging. That’s a lot more important than you think.”

  “I do that at home,” she informed him and then, because it was getting noisier, she raised her voice and said, “I don’t need a network to get me there.”

  “More power to you. Some of us, through no fault of our own, do need a little help with that, and being around other people who know what it’s like to lay your life on the line 24/7 makes it just a little easier to communicate.” She was leaving, he could see it in her eyes. Because his curiosity had always been unbridled, he grabbed the last chance he had and asked her one more time. “Who were you looking for at the shelter?”

  His curiosity made her curious. “Why is it so important for you to know?” she challenged.

 
He repeated his offer, making it seem more appealing this time. “Because, you might have noticed, I have this huge network I can tap into.”

  Bryce waved his hand around the bar. There were a lot of his relatives there, as well as a lot of fellow law-enforcement agents he’d had occasion to work with. Most were great believers in the “one hand washes the other” axiom as long as no laws were broken and no one was hurt in the process.

  “And if you tell me who you’re looking for, I can help you find him—or her.” Bryce tagged the latter on just in case she was looking for a woman.

  She supposed that he meant well, even though he was prying.

  “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.” Scottie rose. “Thanks for the drink.”

  “You didn’t finish it,” he pointed out, standing.

  Scottie paused to drain the last of the light beer from the first serving. The round that Sean had paid for stood untouched.

  Despite the speed with which she drank the last of her initial beer, she felt nothing, not even a slight buzz.

  “There you go,” she announced, dramatically putting the empty bottle down, then smiling up into her partner’s face. “Finished.”

  But as she started to go, Bryce caught her by her wrist and held her in place. There was silent accusation in her blue eyes as she glared at him and tried to yank free.

  “Why don’t you wait a couple of minutes until that hits bottom?” Bryce suggested. One drink was nothing, but he had no idea about her tolerance for alcohol and the last thing he wanted was to have her on the road when she suddenly became light-headed and unable to navigate that little thing she called a car.

  “It’s light beer,” Scottie protested, trying to pull away again. But he only tightened his hold on her wrist. “There’s nothing to ‘hit,’” she insisted.

  Bryce’s stance was unwavering. “Humor me,” he requested.

  Chapter 5

  Scottie’s eyes narrowed. She wasn’t about to cause a scene, but she wasn’t about to be bullied, either. “For how long?” Scottie quietly demanded. “Just how long do you expect me to ‘humor’ you?”

  There was a fire about this woman that he found oddly appealing.

  He had no idea why a little voice suddenly materialized in his head and whispered, Until the end of time. He could just hear her response to that if he told her, Bryce thought. Even without his saying anything, she appeared to be barely constrained, like a volcano that was about to blow.

  “Just a few minutes,” he told her.

  Whether she liked it or not, he was really only thinking of her safety. If she was a novice at drinking, the way she had thrown back the last third of her beer would hit her hard any moment now.

  “Define ‘few,’” Scottie told him, glancing at her watch.

  Draining his own bottle, he pulled a number out of the air. “Give me ten minutes.”

  She was getting impatient. She should have never gone along with this in the first place. “I’ve already given you more than that and I do have a life outside of the police department.”

  Because he’d never seen her at Malone’s, he’d gotten the impression that Scottie wasn’t much of a drinker. If she wasn’t, then her consuming that much beer as quickly as she had would throw her completely off. It would definitely impair her reflexes. He didn’t want her out on the road, driving under those circumstances.

  But as he regarded her, carefully watching her expression, he saw no change taking hold, no appearance of giddiness slipping in. Maybe he was being concerned about nothing.

  “How do you feel?” he asked her.

  There was no hesitation on Scottie’s part as she answered, “Irritated.”

  Bryce released her wrist. “I guess you’re okay to drive,” he told her.

  She supposed he was just trying to look out for her. But she was so accustomed to looking out for herself that to have someone else even hint at doing it had her at a loss as to how to react.

  Still, she felt obligated to explain her reaction, at least to some degree. “Look, I want you to understand something. If I’d felt the slightest bit impaired, there is no way I’d put myself behind the wheel and drive. I’ve got too much respect for my life, the life of any unsuspecting pedestrian or driver out there and the laws of this state against driving inebriated.” She paused. “Have I made myself clear?”

  The woman was as headstrong as they came, Bryce thought. This was going to be one interesting partnership, to say the least.

  “Perfectly.”

  Scottie inclined her head. “Okay, then. Thanks for the drink. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow. Unless, of course, you decide to stay here and drink everyone else under the table,” she couldn’t help adding, just the barest hint of a smile playing on her lips.

  “That was never my intent,” he assured her. And then he surprised her by asking, “Want me to walk you to your car?”

  She looked at her new partner, trying to understand where he was coming from. Did she look as if she wasn’t capable of finding her vehicle? Or was he somehow trying to ingratiate himself to her by behaving gallantly? Or did he think, for some reason, that this was something akin to a date?

  Scottie hadn’t a clue. All she knew was that she wanted to get going so she could swing by Ethan’s apartment, just in case he’d finally turned up.

  “No, I don’t want you to walk me to my car,” she told Bryce. “I want you to stay here and mingle with your friends and family. I am perfectly capable of walking out of here and finding my car.” She started to leave when the sound of his voice stopped her.

  Again.

  “Tell me one thing.”

  Scottie turned around slowly. The look in her eyes told him he was on borrowed time. “‘One thing,’” she repeated. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  It was obvious that they needed to clear the air if they were to work together. “Why do you react to everything I say to you as if I was either challenging you or trying to reduce you to the status of some kind of mindless rookie? I’m not trying to insult you, or belittle you, or make you feel as if I regard you as anything less than a very capable police detective. One I would like to get to know because, like it or not, as long as we’re partners, I expect you to have my back and I damn well intend to have yours. That kind of thing depends on a certain amount of predictability when it comes to one another’s actions—and that comes from getting to know one another.”

  Impatient, Scottie curbed her desire to shift from foot to foot. “Finished?” she asked.

  “Yes. For now.” The way he said it told her that there would be more later.

  “Okay, I’ll work on my Bryce Cavanaugh communication skills,” Scottie told him. “Will that satisfy you?”

  He knew she was being sarcastic, but at least she was aware of the problem and that was a start. “It’ll have to,” he told her.

  “Good. Again, goodbye.” She hooked her messenger bag over her shoulder. “I’ll see you in the morning.” And with that, she began to make her way out of Malone’s.

  Scottie tried to move swiftly without making any eye contact but that was close to impossible, considering she knew, at least by sight, a number of the people currently gathered in the establishment.

  Determined not to exchange any small talk, something she really wasn’t very good at, Scottie plowed through the crowd.

  Cavanaugh had been right, she thought when she finally reached the front door. This was the place where a lot of the detectives and police officers came at the end of the day.

  Opening the heavy oak doors and stepping outside, she took a deep breath. Scottie found that the sun had called it a day, allowing twilight to slip comfortably around the city streets.

  She glanced at her watch out of habit. She’d spent less time in Malone’s than she’d thought she had
. Time had only dragged because she’d been anxious to leave. After being unable to reach Ethan for three days and finding that he hadn’t come by the homeless shelter—his one running good deed that he was so proud of—she felt an almost overpowering need to drive by Ethan’s apartment, something she normally refrained from doing. Hovering was a habit that took vigilance to keep in check.

  Getting into her car, she glanced in the rearview mirror, not just to make sure it was safe to pull out, but also to make sure Cavanaugh hadn’t suddenly gotten it into his head to follow her again.

  He was nowhere in sight.

  Scottie sighed. She was getting paranoid, she told herself.

  Okay, so Cavanaugh had initially followed her to the shelter in an attempt to return her phone, but there was something about the man that made her feel that, given half a chance, he would very willingly put himself in charge of her life.

  Just like you put yourself in charge of Ethan’s? a little voice in her head mocked.

  That was different, she silently insisted, pulling out of the parking lot. Ethan was brilliant, far more brilliant than she was, but he really did lack common sense. People in that category were easily taken advantage of. It had already happened to her brother once. Witness the so-called “friends” he had fallen in with several years ago while he was rebelling against everything. Friends who were quick to take advantage of the fact that he could make computers do things that baffled the average computer-savvy users.

  They, especially that girl Eva with the multicolored hair, she recalled, manipulated Ethan to do things he would have never done on his own. He’d hacked into computers for the fun of it and then, egged on by those same friends, he’d hacked into other computer systems for the sheer profit of it. Inevitably, he’d been caught. Because he was underage and had no prior record—and she had engaged a top-notch lawyer on his behalf—Ethan had ultimately avoided being sent to prison. But he had done time in juvie.

  Once he’d gotten out and she’d made sure that his record was sealed, she’d gotten him a job as a software engineer with a large gaming company and things began looking up. He seemed to have settled in. She had honestly thought that Ethan’s life of crime was all behind him.